Author: kaitann

When we began the semester, I felt like I was diving into a misguided niche. I didn’t believe it could be a viable medium for film and much less a medium unto itself. I think this attitude was informed mainly by a romantic feeling towards “traditional” film. In the same way there was massive resistance to color film, 3d film and even lighter cameras, I was truly against using VR to tell a story. Throughout the filming of Knot for Sale, my attitude towards this medium only strengthened. Being one of the directors of the second unit “flattie” version of the film, I felt almost like we were directly competing with VR. Who could tell a better story? The people who planted an odd camera in the middle of a scene and attempted to guide eyes and interest to where important beats are being performed, or the guys who could…

My experience with 360° VR film is from afar, since my main focus was casting during pre-production, and doing continuity for our secondary, standard film, and there isn’t a need for this job in the 360° format given the lack of editing multiple shots of the same scene together. What I can say about shooting in the round, is that you need actors who can be depended upon to perform for the entire time that the cameras are rolling, the crew need to be experts at hiding out of view of the lenses, and the camera dolly needs to cooperate to ensure that whole scenes aren’t unusable. Beyond that, I’m a bit clueless, so I’ll talk instead about the aspects of filming that I contributed to. First, there was casting, which was an altogether awesome experience. We’d already filled three…

I think everyone who worked on Knot for Sale found shooting in 360 to be vastly different, in good and bad ways, from traditional filmmaking, but props is maybe one area where the contrast isn’t so steep. For Knot for Sale, I went through the same process as with the last film I worked on, my Writ 320 project. For Fortune, though, I was also doing about eight other jobs, so it was delightful to put all my focus into props and set dressing. Plus, I had a small budget! I borrowed some props, bought others, and made some. The most integral prop to our film was the dozens of cookies boxes that our protagonist Stacey needs to sell in order to prove she’s just as good as her nemesis Madison. I had a great time designing the boxes, putting them together, and coming up with a way to create an…